Archive for January, 2018

You may be aware of the problem that Symantec has been having with Google over issuing of a large number of SSL certificates for major domains to individuals who were not associated with the domains. It’s a long story, but the result was Google informing Symantec that the Chrome browser would no longer trust SSL certificates issued by Symantec. The revocation of trust was to occur gradually over certain dates.

As a result, Symantec sold their SSL certificate business to another company that Google does trust. It becomes a little confusing though, since the new company is keeping the Symantec name for the certificates they issue.

If you bought an SSL certificate from us, you have either a RapidSSL, GeoTrust QuickSSL or GeoTrust True BusinessID certificate, and those are Symantec certificates.

Are you affected?

If, like most users, you renew your SSL certificate every year, this issue should not affect you. When you renew, the certificate will still be issued by Symantec, but it will be issued by the new incarnation of Symantec which Google trusts.

If you purchased a multi-year SSL certificate, check this timeline to see if there are any important dates that you should be aware of:

Certificates issued before June 1st, 2016

The Chrome browser will no longer trust this certificate after March 15, 2018. In order to retain trust by the Chrome browser, you need to replace this certificate.

If the certificate expires before March 15th, 2018, you don’t need to do anything. The certificate will continue to be trusted by Chrome until it expires.

If the certificate expires after March 15th, 2018, but before September 13th, 2018, you can re-issue this certificate any time before March 15th, 2018.

As 2017 comes to a close, we reflect on the year that’s passed and look forward to a new year. Here are some of the new features, services and enhancements that we introduced in 2017.

ASP.NET Core Deployment Options

Last year, we launched support for ASP.NET Core on our hosting platform. Since then, Microsoft has been busy with many minor updates and also a major update with ASP.NET Core 2.0. We’ve been working hard to support .NET Core and support the different versions that our customers may be using. Winhost supports Framework Dependent Deployment (FDD) and also Self-contained deployment (SCD).

ASP.NET Framework 4.7

While Microsoft continues to update their latest .NET Core initiatives, they continue to update ASP.NET 4.x as well. We kept up-to-date with Microsoft’s ASP.NET 4.x framework and support ASP.NET 4.7 hosting on our platform.

Managed WordPress

Since WordPress is one of the most popular apps on the web, we host a fair share of WordPress sites. Ans due to its popularity, WordPress gets a lot of attention from hackers, so we’ve helped many of our customers with compromises and hacks. To insure security, it’s important to keep up-to-date with WordPress updates, theme updates and plugin updates.

To that end, we understand that many of our customers may not have the time or the know-how to maintain their WordPress site – so we launched a Managed WordPress service. With our Managed WordPress service, we harden your WordPress application and will update your WordPress core, plugins and themes monthly. Our expert staff will also personally review your WordPress installation every month, looking for any signs of compromise or malicious files. And if any malicious activity is found, we’ll clean it up.

node.js

Due to customer requests, we added support for Node.js. If you are interested in using Node.js, get in contact with us.

Increased FTP Users

We also increased the number of FTP users that can be created for each of our plans. The Basic plan supports 10 FTP users, the Max plan supports 30, and the Ultimate plan supports 100.

Although I didn’t highlight any of the behind-the-scenes activity in this list, you can rest assured that we continue to make improvements to our back-end infrastructure, security, processes, hardware and support.

We’re honored that so many of you trust Winhost with your important websites and applications, and we work hard every day to make you happy that you’ve made that choice.